Tag Archives: consume

Consume

Consume: (v) to eat, drink, or ingest food or drink

Last night, in the spirit of the holidays and expressing great affection, one of my sons made me a huge shrimp cocktail and regally paraded it to the table and set it down in front of me as if I were Henry VIII himself.

It was a beautiful sight. It took time to put together. It was gorgeous (if can bestow such a title upon impaled shrimp).

Yet less than ten minutes later it was consumed. The little fellows had departed, and all that was left behind were little tiny pieces of tail.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

I was not sad. Matter of fact, I was quite satisfied with the offering and how it landed deep within my innards.

But it was gone.

I began to look around to see if there were friends of the shrimp which might be available for further consuming.

There were.

I soon forgot the sacrifice of the initial “little swimmers,” as I consumed more and more of their family members.

I felt no guilt whatsoever at destroying a whole generation of crustacea. Appalling.

Certainly to them, I must seem a monster, invading their safe place in the bay, lodging right next door to their pals, the scallops.

But one thing was sure–after my second, and even third, pursuit…

They were gone.

Consumed.

The only thing I took from that experience is that even though shrimp probably do not have souls (at least I hope not), I do have to be careful not to consume people–human brothers and sisters–who do possess such a gift from God.

We are all consumers.

But every once in a while, we need to realize what we’re consuming–and try to put a little back into the sea.

 

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Chew

Chew: (v) to bite and work (food) in the mouth with the teeth

We often insert the words “good” or “bad” in front of “idea” before we actually consider the merits or the dangers.

People just say, “That’s a good idea!”

Or they dismiss any excitement in the air and proclaim it “a bad idea.”

Here is the breakdown of the word “idea:”

Idea–good–workable.

Ideas come and go.

To find out if they’re good, we have to ask ourselves one question: will we faithfully pursue this concept without prejudice to a fair conclusion?

If we’re willing to do that, we’ll find out immediately if the idea we thought was good is workable. And we have to be honest–if it’s not workable, it’s no longer a good idea. And if it’s not a good idea, it’s no longer an idea anymore and should not be brought up again.

One day I read an article which suggested that digestion, and even consuming less food, could be better achieved by chewing each mouthful at least twenty times.

This seemed reasonable to me.

So the next time I sat down at my meal and I placed the food in my mouth, I counted how many times I chewed it. My natural inclination was to stop at about seven. If it was a piece of steak, maybe eleven. But chewing food twenty times makes it so mushy and meaningless that you want to spit it out instead of swallow it. (Maybe that’s the way you lose weight. Instead of swallowing the mess in your mouth, you expel it–therefore relieving yourself of the calories.)

Chewing is a necessary process so that we don’t choke on the food we so eagerly want to consume.

Over-chewing takes away all the pleasure of eating and enjoying slurping up our treats.

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